The Postcard
A postally unused postcard that was published by Stammers & Field of Wallington. The image is a glossy real photograph.
Although the card was not posted, someone has used the divided back in order to make a birth announcement:
"Baby born June 17th. 1918.
Gwendoline Beatrice
Monica Thompson.
(Gwendoline)
I had a few lovely walks
with Alex and children
down these lanes when
Nature was splendid.
June 4th. to Oct. 2nd. 1918.
M. T."
The District of Croydon holds the record for Gwendoline's birth. Her mother's maiden name was Walker. Gwendoline married a man named Samuel in 1941 in Surrey.
The Location of The Photograph
The entrance on the right leads into Bandon Hill Cemetery. Its front boundary and entrance look very much the same today.
However the left hand side of the road now looks very different. The wooden fence, which would have enclosed a single parcel of land, is long gone, along with the large trees.
There are now semi-detached bungalows running along that side of the road up to the railway bridge in the distance.
Needless to say, the road itself is now busy with traffic all day long.
Bandon Hill Cemetery
The cemetery is located in Wallington, south-west London. It was founded in 1900 by the Croydon Rural District Council.
It has an area of about 6ΒΌ hectares. The cemetery's first interment occurred on Wednesday the 7th. March 1900. On Friday the 24th. March 2006 the cemetery carried out its 30,000th. interment.
Notable Interments at Bandon Hill
Notable interments include:
-- Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, English composer who achieved such success that he was once called the "African Mahler".
-- Eugene Stratton, American-born dancer and singer, whose career was mostly spent in British music halls.
-- Joe Elvin, Cockney comedian and music hall entertainer. He was a Founder of the Grand Order of Water Rats, a show business charity.
-- Jack Lotto, music hall performer of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras whose specialty was a trick-cycling act.
The Cemetery also contains the war graves of 124 Commonwealth service personnel of both World Wars.
The Sinking of a U-Boat
So what else happened on the day that Gwendoline was born?
Well, on Monday the 17th. June 1918, German submarine SM U-64 was depth charged, shelled and sunk in the Mediterranean Sea by Royal Navy patrol ship HMS Lychnis with the loss of 38 of her 43 crew.
Duncan Lamont
The day also marked the birth of Duncan Lamont. Duncan William Ferguson Lamont was a British actor.
Born in Lisbon, Portugal, and brought up in Scotland, he had a long and successful career in film and television, appearing in a variety of high-profile productions.
The Acting Career of Duncan Lamont
Duncan trained as an actor at RADA in London. He had a considerable amount of stage experience pre-WWII. He acted in repertory and at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon. He entered films in the early 1950's.
On film, the best-known of the many productions he appeared in were The Adventures of Quentin Durward (1955, as the villain De La Marck), The 39 Steps (1959, as Kennedy), Ben-Hur (1959, as Marius, an associate of Messala), Mutiny on the Bounty (1962, as John Williams), Arabesque (1966, as Kyle Webster) and Battle of Britain (1969, as Flight Sergeant Arthur).
Lamont is particularly memorable in his role as the wry, urbane Viceroy in Jean Renoir's The Golden Coach (1952).
From 1958 to 1960, Lamont was a semi-regular as David MacMorris in the CBS western television series, The Texan, starring Rory Calhoun.
Lamont also appeared in guest roles in a range of popular British programmes from the 1950's to the 1970's, including The Adventures of Robin Hood, Dixon of Dock Green, Danger Man, The Avengers, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), The Persuaders! and Doctor Who.
In 1953, he appeared in the major role of astronaut Victor Carroon in Nigel Kneale's ground-breaking BBC science-fiction serial The Quatermass Experiment, and fourteen years later returned to the series when he played the role of Sladden in the Hammer Films version of the third serial, Quatermass and the Pit.
The Death of Duncan Lamont
Duncan died on the 19th. December 1978 in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, of a heart attack at the age of 60 or, to put it another way, he lived for 22,100 days.
He was working at the time on "Hostage", an episode of the BBC science-fiction series Blake's 7. Although he had completed location work for the episode, he died before the studio scenes had been shot, necessitating a re-mount of the location material in which he appeared, and his replacement by the actor John Abineri.
He was married to the Irish actress Patricia Driscoll until his death in 1978. They had two children together.
